Do you struggling to find the words to authentically connect with your yoga community online?

You’re not alone. Many yoga teachers feel uncomfortable with the idea of being in the social media spotlight. They make it about their journey when in fact sharing you message online is actually about your student’s journey. When you think of the spotlight in this way, it makes the process of sharing your teachings to benefit your student and offer a transformation to them, much easier – and your message helps you to authentically connect with your yoga community.

Sharing your message more authentically helps you to deeply resonate with your ideal students and this encourages them to keep coming back for more.

You want to deliver a powerful message and service that builds trust, and turns your ideal students into loyal students who will speak highly of you and recommend you as their yoga teacher.

There are five manageable tactics you can use to develop your business purpose, message and voice and allow you to interact and engage with likeminded people who are interested in your teachings.

1. Think back to where it all began

The first step requires you to think right back to the very beginning of your yoga teacher training.

Why did you want to become a yoga teacher in the first place?How did you want to help and why did you want to help them?For example, were you interested in working with people who suffered from mental health conditions?Or were you interested in working with those who suffered from injury and wanted to use yoga as a form of rehabilitation and recovery?

Deciding to become a yoga teacher might have been much more of a personal journey for you.

Yoga certainly helped me through periods of depression after graduating from university and gave me a positive outlook on life again.

Once I realised that yoga could benefit my mental and physical health and allow me to explore spirituality in my own way, I knew I had to find a way of teaching this skill to others online so that I could authentically connect with my yoga community.

I discovered that my passion and purpose as a yoga teacher was to create a safe space where people could explore their own mental health issues and use yoga as a tool to help them have a better outlook on life.

So go back to your teacher training manuals and see what type of people you wanted to teach back then.

Does helping that particular group of people still light you up now?

We often get caught up teaching to those that are immediately around us and forget who we really wanted to teach in the first place.

Knowing who your ideal student is will help you to authentically connect and communicate with them online. People can immediately tell if you’re talking about something you do not fully believe in and it puts them off working with you and they certainly won’t trust what you are telling them.

When you are being true to yourself you will attract your audience much more easily.

Not only will it allow you to help those you want to but also it will reignite your love for your job again if it has left you feeling somewhat deflated.

3. Share your story

Once you’ve rekindled that fire within and rediscovered or even redeveloped your purpose, share your stories with the world to help you to authentically connect with your yoga community online.

There are many different ways you could do this.

Sharing your message happens during a class through how you choose to theme it or by opening up a conversation that you believe could positively help others.

Allow your class attendees to leave with some new way of thinking that they may have never considered before. Allow them to sit with that conversation and grow from it in their own way.

Through using social media and email, I’ve learned that when I’m open, honest and vulnerable about a situation that I’ve been facing, people resonate with it and it often gains the most traction.

I’ve found that more people like, share, follow or comment on those kinds of posts than some of my more day-to-day ones.

3. Find your voice

It’s important to work on the overall tone of voice you want to create online so that you can authentically connect with your yoga community.

Your voice should match the type of content you’re sharing on social media and your website.

If you’re very passionate on creating detailed, educational articles or posts on good safety practices in yoga or discussing the physical anatomy of a yoga pose or practice, you may wish to consider using a more serious tone.

This gives you more credibility and often people are more likely to trust what you are telling them.

You’re able to authentically demonstrate sound knowledge of these serious and important elements of the practice and share your message and purpose with ease.

On the other hand, you may focus on creating content where you choose to share your personal journey with yoga.

In that case you might decide that it is more appropriate to use an informal, slightly more chatty and personal style of writing to share your message.

By choosing one clear style of writing people will get a feel for the type of person you are and have a better understanding of what you can offer them. You’ll attract the right students and deter those who don’t resonate with your message – and that’s ok. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Another element to consider when deciding on your voice and communication style is your age demographic. For example, I choose to use an open and chatty style of writing in my online content because I discuss my own experiences on topics surrounding yoga, mental health and body image issues.

I also target my writing towards young women who may struggle with similar issues. If I decided to write for a different age demographic I might choose to alter my overall tone to better suit their needs.

Developing your voice takes time and you might want to play around with a few different styles to see which flows more naturally to you or attracts your ideal customer.

4. Discover your flow

There are plenty of articles online recommending how many times a day / week / month you should upload new content to authentically connect with your yoga community and keep them engaged.

However, I’ve learnt it’s less about how much you’re posting but how consistently you’re posting.

If you’re just getting started with social media, it’s best to not overload yourself by thinking you have to post every single day. Instead, set yourself a realistic goal so that you’re more likely to succeed and build it up from there.

When I first launched my yoga blog and Instagram account, I looked at my typical week to decide how much time I could realistically devote to creating online content.

I began writing one blog post every other week and posting on Instagram up to three times a week.

This schedule wasn’t too overwhelming which meant that creating content never became a chore.

Over time I’ve learnt how to best manage this and have increased my blog posts to once a week and still feel motivated to creating interesting content that serves my community.

It’s also hugely important that you write about things that mean something to you. Give the post the respect it deserves by taking your time and crafting something you are proud of. Don’t write something in half the time you would like to just so you get something new online.

People can smell the lack of effort a mile off and it’s actually more likely to deter them from reading or coming back to your account or website in the future.

5. Give stuff away for free – yep, you read that right!

People love free stuff.

Visitors to your yoga website are more likely to give you their email address in exchange for a valuable piece of free content that benefits their physical, mental or emotional wellbeing or offers a solution to one of their struggles or pain points.

In May I ran a ‘Seven Days of Self Love Challenge’ email opt in freebie for my followers in exchange for their email address. I sent an email every morning for seven days with information, affirmations and challenges.

Each email encouraged my subscribers to love their bodies and improve how they viewed themselves in just one week. It was really successful – my Instagram following increased and those who took part shared their stories online and most importantly people benefitted from changing their mind-set to more self-love.

Freebies can include workbooks, email challenges, video content, PDFs, webinars, templates and much more. Free content will help you to build trust and authentically connect with your yoga community.

So there you have it, my five tips which will allow you to communicate more authentically with the world and attract your tribe.

Creating authentic content takes time, you’ll not gain a million new followers over night but the followers that you do get using these suggestions will remain active on your account and become brand loyal supporting you and your business.

A Vinyasa teacher passionate for teaching others the importance of self love, self care and promoting positive mental health for those struggling with conditions like anxiety and depression. She believes in the importance of free movement and healthy living habits.